Trapped in a Tinderbox
by Lore55
Summary: Kat got stuck as a cat, and tossed bodily through the tv set. In her quest to get home, she gets tangled up in a conflict that will sweep across cities, continents, and maybe even worlds.
1. Arrival

Her fur (which she was not supposed to have) was filthy.

Perhaps not by people standards (which she also had) but by her own (cat) standards she was dirty and gross. There was mud on her paws, and clump of fur behind her right ear that she could not get rid of.

Katelyn, who was not going to focus on the irony of her name right now thank you very much, picked her way quickly through the streets. It had taken her months to get here, and she'd ended up in Dubai before she'd finally arrived in Japan, and finally, finally she was in Yokohama.

It was the hardest thing she'd ever done in her life. Harder than working fourteen days straight, harder than taking a shift from two am to seven pm, even harder than scrambling up the side of a mountain with a snow storm on the horizon.

She'd had to find a way to get all the way to DIA, which involved hiding in a horrendously smelly purse and ducking under seats on buses and finally a shuttle. Then it had taken her weeks to manage to get on not only the right flight, but not get caught anywhere and tossed into a cage. Again. She was starting to hate cages.

No, she was finally, finally in Yokohama. It was the only place that she knew for absolute certain that there was someone who could help her.

It might have been easier to hitch a ride with the Guild Members, when she found out where she was that she was now a goddamn cat. The only problem was, she had no fuckig clue where they were, and Yokohama didn't move.

So here she was, wandering as the sky grew darker and darker, trying in vain to find one man out of a million.

It wasn't like she could ask people around the street if they'd seen her target, and it wasn't like she could just google the Armed Detective Agency's base of operations.

No thumbs, no luck.

So she skulked through the streets, the gross feeling of wet dirt in her paws and the irritating knot behind her ear, looking for any familiar faces or even just a street sign in english. She had a good enough understanding of Japanese to get the gist of what people around her were saying, but that wasn't going to do her much good and all of the specifics were lost. Duolingo wasn't _that _much help.

With little choice left and the streets starting to turn over from the bright hustle of daylight to the quick lights and high tempers of night she found a good window sill to sit her furry little butt on and watch the world dissolve into shadows.

Katelyn stayed there until the middle of the night, when a window cracked open and brushed her long tail.

She liked to think it was a testament to her than she only lifted her head and looked behind her instead of jumping with a howl.

Behind her, holding a glass half full of something red and bitter, was a young man about her age, only he was human, and he had the prettiest blue eyes she had ever seen.

"You don't belong here," he said. Kat stiffened, lifting up on her paws and ready to bolt when he inevitably took a swipe at her. Only he didn't. He just looked at her, swirling the wine around in a glass. Long fingers in dark gloves lifted towards her, crooking at her until she leaned forwards to bump her nose against them.

They smelled like oil, wine, and something metallic. There was something else too, something underneath that made her tail twitch.

"How'd you get here?" he asked, looking down the ledge. Kat peered with him. They were a good ten stories off the ground. Kat, as a cat, could jump oddly high up.

_I jumped, _she said, but all that came out was a 'meow'.

Those long fingers tracing around her head until they were scratching at the back, behind her ears. She leaned into the touch gladly, tail swishing slowly back and forth. Her dark green eyes slowly shut.

"You should be careful where you go, kitty, you might end up somewhere dangerous."

Kat didn't respond. She just relished in the contact while she had it. People loved stray dogs. Stray cats, less so.

The man leaned on the window sill next to her for a long time, petting her and drinking wine until his cheeks were well and pink. He even worked the knot out of her fur.

When he pulled back inside she pulled her tail away from the window so it wouldn't be squished when he shut it.

He didn't shut it, just wandered inside and down the hall, out of sight and out of mind.

Kat settle closer to the warmth of the inside. It wasn't a bad place to be.


	2. Morning After

When sunlight lit across her eyes Kat rose and stretched, keeping careful balance on the ledge. She shook herself out and looked out into the glittering city, runing his rough tongue over his muzzle. She was gonna have to find food today…

She looked into the apartment, weighing the risk. The man from last night was nice enough, but he was also tipsy. She had no idea what he was like when he was a normal person. Kat's tail twitched from side to side.

She hopped down onto the soft carpet and trotted into the apartment on swift paws. The kitchen sink had handle bars instead of knobs, making it easy for her to jump up and turn on the cold water. It seemed to her like nothing had ever tasted so good as clean water after she'd been on the streets. She used some of the water to clean the rest of the dirt out of her paws, despite the discomfort that came along with getting her fur wet. She finally understood why cats didn't like water.

Kat turned off the water and looked around for something that might be edible that wasn't locked in the fridge. She wasn't strong enough to get those things open.

There was a bowl with a couple of tomatoes sitting on the counter, and a few spices lined up on top of the back of the stove, where a frying pan the smelled like eggs sat. There was an empty rice maker, and a keurig, which whirred to life when she bopped the button on it.

She was trying to pry open one of the cabinets under the counter when footsteps alerted her to the man approaching. She looked up, paw wedged into the door.

He looked down at her. Dressed in loose pants and a wife beater he was adorably sleepy looking. In the light that streamed through the window she could see that his hair was the color of maple leaves, tangling across his shoulders. He still had gloves on.

Kat stayed still, her muscles bunching under her haunches. She was ready to bolt, but instead of looking angry he just looked vaguely amused.

"You should have left already," he told her, but made no move to chase her away. Kat moved out of his way when he walked into the kitchen moving around. He pulled eggs from the fridge and poured rice into the cooker. "I guess you were the one who was making all that noise. I could have hurt you, little guy."

Kat wrinkled her nose at the term, and meowed petulantly up at him.

The man leaned on the counter, looking down at her.

Kat did her very best to look cute and harmless and meowed up at him. She wiggled her fuzzy butt and jumped up onto the counter next to him so she could but her head against his shoulder. He was slim, but strong.

"You know I didn't say you could stay," he told her. The egg frying in the pan got flipped. He cut off a little piece of the white with the spatula and held it in front of her face.

Kat cheered internally and quickly snatched it from him, even caring if she burnt her tongue a little along the way. Her sharp little needle teeth tore the egg to pieces as she devoured it in record time. She was just a couple days shy of starving, but she was still hesitant to eat from the trash. Pride was the death of man, and cat maybe.

She purred and rubbed against the nice man, rubbing her chin along his shoulder until he smelled like her. He fed her more scraps of eggs, and she even got some of his rice, even though it wasn't meat it was still something.

When he went to eat she joined him, sitting at his feet and hoping for a few more scraps of food. He obliged her with good humor.

When he went to get ready for the day Kat sat on his table, grooming herself while he did the same thing.

It wasn't until he walked out that Kat realized something amazing.

She hadn't realized, until he came out in his long coat and his fine hat that she realized who exactly who was.

Chuuya Nakahara walked out of his bedroom, looking like a badass. Chuuya, who would, eventually, run into Dazai. Who with one touch would turn her back into a human.

Kat leapt from the table and ran for him, twining between his legs and nearly tripping him.

When her paws left the ground she released a very dignified squak. She looked down at her paws, which were glowing a faint red, then up at Chuuya who was making her weightless. She swam messily through the air until she was clinging to his shoulder, voicing her complaints and nipping at his hair.

"You're a weird little thing," he told her. "I'll drop you off outside. Find a good place to go."

She sunk he claws into his shoulder when the gravity came back. He made for the door, Kat holding tight to his shoulder while he walked out of the apartment. He took an elevator down and still Kat held onto him.

She didn't even willingly release him until he pried her off of his shoulder once they were outside and put her on the ground. She meowed angrily.

"Go on," Chuuya waved at her, "Shoo."

_No! _

Kat ran after him when he tried to walk away, dogging his heels stubbornly. She wasn't going anywhere. She needed him!

Well not him but his worst enemy! She needed that guy!

She ducked feet and dodged cars on her way after him. His strides were long but she was fast and determined. She followed him all the way to the massive glass building that she could only assume was Port Mafia HQ.

It was there that she lost him.

Kat stalled in the main room. There was a secretary behind a big desk and men and women in suits moving all over the place. There were elevators on the other side of the wide room, and another set of more heavily guarded ones the other way around.

Kat's fur lifted on her back. No!

She scrambled out of the way of unweary boots. Everyone in here was armed to the teeth, and none of them were looking for a cat or watching where they stepped. Her mind whirred. Who in here liked cats, and was connected to Chuuya? Who would see him soonest, who would tolerate a cat following after them?

Kat had to jump to the side to the side and run as fast as she could when someone almost stepped on her tail. She ended up skidding through moving legs, almost getting kicked in the head, and barely made it into an elevator before the door shut.

She breathed fast and hard, staring at the door she'd almost died to get to it.

She back away from it, stiff and alert. There was someone else in the elevator. When she looked up, she found dark eyes, black hair, and a very thin young man in a long black coat.


	3. Mob Affection

Her plan wasn't to get in an elevator with Octogan Man, but here she was.

To his credit he just looked at her before he hit the button. He didn't care about her, and he didn't make a move to shoo her away. Was it normal here for people to just accept the fact that cats just stood in elevators with them and sat on their kitchen counters?

...This was the same country where a cat was a station master at the subway. Of course no one was mean to cats here.

Unlike americans, who killed feral and wild cats and then cut them up in high school science classes.

Kat watched the elevator numbers rise steadily. Higher and higher. How high up did this building go?

Akutagawa tapped his heel impatiently, his long black coat rippling with the motion. Something in the darkness caught her eyes. A flicker in the shadows. Something not-quit-red. The flicker of movement held her attention. Her tail twitched slowly. She flexed her claws.

It moved again and she lashed out, smacking into the darkness.

"What the hell?" Akutagawa jerked away from her. Her ears pricked. She could hear something shuffling inside of his coat. The thing moved, a flash of shadows. Kat crouched low, her butt wiggling as she prepared to pounce.

Right before she could Akutagawa stepped out of the elevator the second the door opened, sending her careening into the wall.

Kat hit with a hiss and scrambled after him, long legs not nearly so graceful as they should have been. Akutagawa picked up his pace, trying to outrun her, but Kat was determined. He saw Dazai sometimes too! And if he didn't, he saw Atsushi, and Atsushi saw Dazai and Atsushi was a weretiger. Could weretigers talk to cats? God she hoped so.

She didn't know where Akutagawa was going, but she was _not _letting him go.

She ducked and dodged people, ignoring their shouts and a few people who were knocked aside. She tore down the hallway, shooting through a closing door just before it shut with a click.

She came to a halt. The room was full of familiar and unfamiliar faces. The Port Mafia.

Her fur lifted on end. None of them seemed to have noticed her yet. She slunk around the corners of the room, trying not to pay attention to anything that was said in the room. The less about this organization she knew about the better.

Kat slipped around a desk and through the curtains, until she found another door that she batted with her paw until it creaked open. A brief glance inside and she pulled back out. Cute little blonde girls were not what she was here to find.

She came around again, and when she spotted a flash of red hair she reacted and jumped onto the adjoining shoulder.

A shoulder that was slim and feminine.

Koyo, or whatever her name was, jumped and in an instant there was a phantom apparition with a sword touching the fine furs on Kat's neck. Kat looked over at it, her spine lifted and her fur on end.

"Oh my, look at that," came the smooth voice of the man in the center of the room. "It seems you've made a friend!"

The phantom, a lovely woman in traditional clothes, pulled the blade away from her. Kat's fur slowly laid back down. She batted lightly at the womans bangs. She was incredibly pretty.

"Hello little one," Koyo picked her up with gentle hands, bringing her into her arms. Kat couldn't help leaning into the attention. How come mafia people were nicer than suburban moms?

"You gotta be kidding me!" Came a much more familiar voice.

She looked across the room and found Chuuya sitting on a couch across from Mori, his hands resting on his knees. His had was askew.

"Is this your cat?" Koyo asked, petting her head gently. Kat couldn't help the pur that worked its way through her chest. Just a little bit of affection and she was putty in her hands.

"No!" Chuuya scowled. "She snuck into my place last night. I tried to leave her outside this morning. She must have followed me or something."

Mori laughed, a rather pretty sound. Kat meowed at him, tail flicking back and forth.

"That would make her your cat then, wouldn't it? Or more accurately, you're her person."

Chuuya's cheek puffed out before the air left him. He didn't fight the Port Mafia boss, he just held his hands out for her. Kat was momentarily offended that he thought she was that easy. Then she realized that she was that easy. She needed him to find Dazai, and more importantly…

He was really hot.

And Kat could potentially sit on his lap, or play with his nicely long hair.

Kat squirmed out of Koyo's arms and trotted across the room to leap up. Chuuya stayed still while she climbed up his arm and rest on his shoulder. She leaned against his cheek, closing her eyes and trying not to listen to any of the conversation.


End file.
